Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:30
“It is the careless participation which is the reason for the many feeble and sickly Christians in your church, and the explanation of the fact that many of you are spiritually asleep.” (1 Corinthians 11:30, Phillips)
“That is why so many of you remain weak in character and sick of heart, worn down by worry and fear, some even falling asleep in death.” (The Remedy)
Is Paul speaking here of physical weakness, poor health and death, or of spiritual weakness, poor health and spiritual death? Most of the translations I use read this verse as being about the body: weak, sick, fallen asleep. Only two name the spiritual side. Phillips speaks of Christians who are spiritually asleep. The Remedy speaks of people weak in character and sick of heart, worn down by worry and fear.
Read the first way, the verse still tells the truth. If you fail to open your heart to the Lord for healing, the result will be poor health and eventual death. There is no real peace and rest for the body and soul away from the Lord. The mind is constantly needing to protect self; it becomes self-focused. That is not a healthy way to live. You will wear yourself out at an early age.
The Body Follows the Heart
But the other meaning, spiritual unhealth and death, is true also. If you refuse to allow the Lord to heal and transform your life, if you are not daily growing in the graces of Christlikeness, the cost will be a turning away from truth completely. You are choosing something else. Your life is focused elsewhere, and the body follows where the heart and mind lead.
No one remains in a stale, stagnant state. Change is always happening. We are always in a state of becoming more. The question is, what is our more going to be? More Christlike, or more self-focused, self-absorbed?
Our heart and mind will follow the direction of our attention. Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image (2 Corinthians 3:18). So what are we investing our time and energy into?
When the Things of God Grow Dull
Spiritual death occurs when we have lost all interest in spiritual things, when we are no longer affected by the drawing of the Spirit of God. We have checked out religion, gone down that road, and now have found something more interesting and fulfilling to fill our time with. The things of God that once excited us have become boring, or even distasteful. This is spiritual death: to be alive in this world with no interest or concern for anything beyond this life.
I believe this is what Paul is referring to. There is no real point in stating the obvious, that people get sick and die; poor physical health has any number of causes. Paul is telling us why: the body follows where the heart and mind lead. He is describing the natural consequences in a life that refuses to surrender to the Lord after coming into the body of believers. That life does not stand still. It will either keep climbing the ladder of Christian graces (2 Peter 1:5–7), or lose interest and drift back to the world.
Asleep, Not Beyond Waking
I am speaking of someone who has truly tasted of the Love and care of God and then chooses to walk away, not someone who poked their head in the door, looked around for a little while, and then drifted away without a full understanding of what they were leaving. It is a very bad place to find yourself, especially when you no longer care that you are there. Walk that road all the way to its end, and the condition is truly terminal. Only God can see when a heart has closed for good, and that judgment is His, not ours. But notice the word Paul chose: asleep. A sleeper can still be wakened. “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14). The same Spirit whose drawing we stopped feeling has not stopped drawing.
So the question comes back to each of us this morning, not to the one who walked away: What is our more going to be?
